I received the following comment from a third-grade teacher. She is trying her best but federal and state officials keep interfering with her ability to teach. You will note that she writes acronym after acronym of big programs, big ideas that officials keep dumping on her.
As I read her comment, my heart went out to her. She became a teacher because she wants to teach. The bureaucrats and the experts have decided that data matters most, and she is drowning in data, data assessment, pre- and post-test analysis, name it.
What does all this verbiage and all these programs have to do with teaching and learning?
Have we lost our collective minds?
Is there no help for a teacher who just wants to teach and nurture the children in her care?
| I teach 3rd. grade at a “Turn Around School” in Escondido, CA. For the last two years I have felt the “heat” of improving test scores. Countless hours of PD & meetings for SIPPS check-ins, DRA Analysis, NWEA Data Analysis, Mirrored Pre and Post Analysis, Write Calibration and Scoring Analysis, weekly Student Work analysis, Data Team Assessment, collaborative cycle, technology, etc., etc. Plus multiple visits to observe/ evaluate teachers in their classrooms during the day is a standard procedure. 80% of my students made 1 1/2 years of growth as measured by DRA and NWEA assessments. I don’t know how this will translate into CST scores. So, if the Gates’ are solely using CST scores as their results indicators I will probably be labeled as an ineffective teacher. |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We’re so busy weighing the cows that we don’t have time to feed them.
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Kathleen Heaply Triana, your response is about the most reasonable and outstanding I have seen on this blog or any other. Ha!
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I know what you mean by saying that the acronyms hint at “big ideas,” but of course, what they really reveal is the complete *absence* of ideas – ideas about what, why or how to teach. There’s not even a word in there about teachers spending time thinking of new innovative ways to do things, which presumably is what the point of all the data collection is. Painful.
The mania for measurement is evident even in community colleges (where I work). We now spend so much time working on developing and implementing assessment cycles for student learning outcomes (no undergraduate left behind!) that we’ve hardly got any time to do the things we used to do, like actually talk with each other about things that are or aren’t working in our classrooms – or follow up with a colleague on an experimental curriculum idea – or have collaborative grading sessions – all the things that matter, in other words.
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Pardon my ignorance because it has been sometime since I taught in the Community College, but what do you mean by “collaborative grading sessions”?
I graded my students according to what they did in my class; nothing else. Please explain collaborative grading! This is the first time I have heard this term used. Please explain!
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Show that teacher’s letter to anyone and they’d never be able to understand it. Well written as I believe that was part of her intention.
To answer your three questions: 1) absolutamente nada, 2) ciertamente 3) no, no hay ninguna ayuda, mejor obtener otro empleo.
Or in English 1) absolutely nothing 2) certainly 3) no, there is no help, better to get a different job.
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To “Turnaround School Teacher”: You sound like an incredible teacher and congratulations on the progess you are driving with your students ! I wish every child in our country had a teacher like you.
You may be disappointed to hear that Diane, in her June 9, 2012 post (“The Case of Melinda Gates’ Statement, Solved”) mocks teachers achieving the kind of gains you are achieving with your students. Referring to Gates’ assertion that an effective teacher can get three times the gains of an ineffective teacher, Diane wrote:
“Imagine if every child in every classroom in the U.S. had an effective teacher every year, as Melinda Gates said would one day be possible due to the work of the Gates Foundation. That would mean that every child would gain 18 months of instruction every year. By the end of eighth grade, every child would be ready to go to college, having gotten the test score gains equivalent to twelve years of schooling. College-readiness by 13 or 14! That would surely be a break-through for our society and would change the nature of college-going.”
And Diane added a postscript:
“A reader on Twitter suggests that she would be satisfied if 14-year-olds arrived with appropriate skills and knowledge for their grade.”
“Turnaround School Teacher”: Thank you for the job you are doing, for not being satisfied with the status quo, and for the 18 months of growth you are getting from most of your students. You should be exalted, not mocked.
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Is this a joke? If not, what a fruitcake!
Uh oh I just used an ad hominem. Where’s the mainstream media.
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I recently spoke to a young woman who has graduated with a degree in elementary education. She is bright, well spoken and thoughtful. “Although” she said “I will apply for my certfication, I have decided not to pursue my career as a teacher” When I asked her why she said that the new requirements for APPR, Common Core, Assessment etc were so complicated and stressful that she did not know if she had the stamina to stick it out. I have been teaching for 16 years and my stamina is being tested everyday. This is only one example of my hearing that young people are opting out and educators advising their students to really think about a career in education. I keep hearing we need to weed out the ineffective educators and attract the best and the brightest. Well, perhaps the best and the brightest are bright enough to realize that the negatives are beginning to far outway the postives when it comes to teaching. I am so glad that my own children are out of school and will not have to be subjected to a test score as a measure of who they are.
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Ed and Turn Around, you seem on extreme ends of the spectrum. There just needs to be a middle ground. I agree with Ed, Congrats. Looking at data and pinpointing what students need to target instruction is important. However, I agree with Turn around, high stakes tests though are on steroids and it does have a negative effect. Just a middle ground….We need a well-rounded education.
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I am currently submitting fake DRA results to match the rest of the useless data we should be using to “inform our instruction”……I hope my boss is not following Diane…doubt a Data Diva would…..shhhhh!!!
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Diane asked…”Is there no help for a teacher who just wants to teach and nurture the children in her care?”
Maybe we should elect the man who said this…
“Don’t label a school as failing one day and then throw your hands up and walk away from it the next. Don’t tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles in a standardized test…You didn’t devote your lives to testing. You devoted it to teaching, and teaching is what you should be allowed to do.”
Oh…wait…
http://bloom-at.blogspot.com/2012/06/whats-choice-for-public-education.html
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what he says does not match his policy. in fact, what he says is lip service. it’s what he want us to believe that he believes. (how’s that for double-speak). it’s not what his Ed department allows or encourages teachers to do.
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@kindergeek…that was my point. Sorry if the irony didn’t show thru.
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And the NEA endorses this person for re-election. (turn off sarcasm)
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@Duane…NEA made a big mistake. They should have held out…they represent millions of teachers…by endorsing so early in the campaign they let the president know that it doesn’t really matter what he does. At this point in time President Obama doesn’t deserve the endorsement of public school teachers…at least not for his education record.
The problem is that there are only two viable candidates…and, while President Obama has proven himself to be no friend of public education, the alternative is just as bad if not worse. Governor Romney has no plan for public education beyond continuing its wholesale destruction. Diane had a good post about it…here:
There really isn’t anyone running who will help public education and public school teachers.
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But what this teacher is saying is that despite all her successes, despite the time she’s having to spend complying with measuring her students’ learning (time that is taken away from actually helping students learn) – she may still be counted as ineffective. No one is mocking her; and a system that requires her to put in hours every week in data measurement sure isn’t exalting her.
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Thank you for “time that is taken away from actually helping students learn”.
I believe that my “job” as a teacher is to provide the best “teaching and learning” environment that I can, not a “training and testing” one. Teaching and learning focuses on the process which is where we should be focusing our energies. In contrast, training and testing focuses our attention on to an end product not the process.
“End product” thinking-output-is a business way of thinking which is fine when one can control all the inputs into and the process itself. Since we have no way to control the input (the students, and I hate talking in terms of input and output when it comes to the students, kind of like “human resources” which is a term I despise, instead of personnel departments) nor control the output, we should focus then on process, i. e., teaching and learning.
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Let the teachers teach.
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Take a moment and focus on this 3rd grade teacher’s closing sentence: “So, if the Gates’ are solely using CST scores as their results indicators I will probably be labeled as an ineffective teacher.”
There’s the problem. The Gates are using scores (or biometric bracelets, or student surveys, or ….) that will cause this teacher, and all of us, to be labeled ineffective. My point? Why are the Gates’ even in this equation? How did we get to the point where we have allowed anyone to GIVE our entire public school system to two individuals who, while they may be generous, thoughtful, savvy, intelligent, and powerful, have no formal training in being a teacher, nor practical experience to suggest what public education should be . If Mr. Gates wants to help public education, I invite him to continue to pioneer new technologies which will assist us in bringing the world into our classrooms and allowing students of multiple intelligences and abilities to show learning with the tools he is gifted enough to create – but please, leave the decisions for running our schools and educating our youth to the teachers who have trained for this vocation and are able to articulate exactly what is needed and how we need to get there.
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The Gates are in the equation because they own a large computer company and the current agenda being promoted by charter schools, vested interest, is to promote computerized education. That is the bottom line. Follow the money trail! If, and when they get rid of all higher level paid professional teacher, then their stock goes up. Or when they terminate all teachers who question the scripted computer “Skinner box” system, then, and only then will the American people understand what is happening to their children and our country. This is a very simple equation. Follow the money trail!
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BINGO!!!!
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I don’t see a problem with collecting data to drive instruction. Teaching without data in my opinion is worse. But, it sounds like that school has so much data it doesn’t know where it is going anymore. That is sad to me.
I use data to decide what to teach next, I collect data in many different ways. This is one way: http://planetsmith.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/data-and-decision-making/
I am still able to teach, nuture and help my students learn. Without the data I do feel that I am just going on a feeling or opinion, rather than what my students specifically know.
I think we need to do a better job of teaching how to read data and guide instruction!
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